The Humane Society Wants to Take the Meat Off Your Table and Give it to Terrorists

The latest gaseous ripple in the vast Right-Wing paranoia fever-swamp comes from Iowa congressman Steve King, who thinks the Humane Society is “run by vegetarians with an agenda whose goal is to take meat off everyone’s table in America.” Yikes.

King seems to think there’s something sinister about HSUS using its power and money to lobby in Washington against all forms of animal cruelty, some of aspects of which include cracking down on the horrifyingly awful Meat Industrial Complex that is so vital to King’s state. It’s actually not a bad political move from King, to try to lump the respected (and, indeed, powerful) HSUS into the same category as the bipartisanly annoying PETA, i.e. “The Human Society is nothing but a bunch of Liberal Elitist Communo-Fascist-Islamo Hippies who will take your meat and give it to terrorists.” (It’s true, you know, that’s our plan.)

I used to think that the love of, say, dogs was one of those wonderfully universal, apolitical sentiments that could create common ground for people from across the political spectrum, but I’m kind of doubtful of even that anymore. There seems, now, to be a big divide between the purebred aficionados and the shelter dog/mutt lovers. I’m a member of the latter camp and feel pretty strongly about the distorting power of breed fetishization, from both a “dog as commodity” and a “dog as genetic experiment” perspective.

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Welll, actually, HSUS’s Wayne Pacelle has been videotaped saying precisely that — that his ultimate goal for HSUS is to bring an end to the livestock/meat food industry. So while King is a little extreme in his rhetoric, he’s not wrong.

The goal of the HSUS is to end the worst abuses in factory farming. This is very diferent from bringing an end to the livestock industry. Here’s an interview Wayne Pacelle did with AgriTalk Radio last year that describes our organization’s approach/philosophy in greater depth: http://www.bovinevetonline.com/directories&hellip;. Rep. King has a particularly bad voting record on animal welfare, having opposed disaster planning for pets, strong penalties for dogfighters and cockfighters and other common-sense policies.